The Good Life: Tread Carefully (ch. 44) (Patreon)

Taylor caught a glimpse of red hair as they stepped into the dilapidated Hallucigen building. Her insects detected something in the air, but their senses couldn't detect exactly what it was, but to be safe, they entered the building with gas masks on. The building wasn't any more dangerous or run down than the others in the area, but Taylor felt her heart start to pound in her chest while her hands started getting clammy.

“What we're looking for is probably in the CEO's office,” Law ventured into the building without care. Taylor glanced in the direction that she saw the red hair, but there was nothing there. “But, there are some other interesting things in the area, so we're going to go the long way rather than jump to the top.”

“Why bother?” Rumi questioned, sounding far less combative than she normally did. It seemed she wanted to get ahold of the sick men and women behind the Vaults enough she was willing get to put up with Law.

“You'll see,” Law replied. “Curie -- let me know if you see anything worth taking. Feels like this is your area of expertise,” he added before uttering, “Room,” underneath his breath. A second later, Taylor found herself with the others on the second floor of a half collapsed skyscraper. The disorientation only lasted a moment now that she was getting used to it, and she saw an office area. Computers, cubicals, even a bone dry water cooler that had two piles of bones by it.

“Of course, monsieur!” Curie replied all too happily, floating off-

Taylor heard a familiar laugh and flinched. Her foot caught against a basket, and she nearly toppled back if it wasn't for Law catching her. A shiver raced down her spine at the feeling of his hand on her back, gently pushing her back up. His expression was hidden behind his mask but his voice sounded concerned, “You good?”

Taylor felt every trace of moisture dry up in her mouth, “I'm fine.” She replied more curtly than she intended, stepping away from Law. “I… did you hear something?”

“Like what?” Law questioned and Taylor struggled to find an answer. Instead, she shook her head.

“Nothing. Forget I said anything,” she replied lamely, clenching her jaw. She knew that laugh. She’d heard it more times than she ever wanted to think about and she didn't have any good memories attached to it. Pressing forward, wondering what exactly was going on. Taylor's gaze slid to Rumi, who seemed unbothered, and Yoruichi, who seemed delighted shaking a dust covered snow globe. Whatever was going on seemed to just be affecting her.

No. Now wasn't the time to be distracted. Now was the time to be useful. Law valued strength, so she had to be strong. He wasn't someone that she could afford to look weak in front of. So, she ignored the pit of unease that opened up in her stomach and used her insects to explore the building in an organized manner. Curie was inspecting some chemicals and solutions that were gathered up in supply closest, while Taylor turned her gaze upwards.

“There's power above us,” she informed the others, seeing dim lights through her insect's senses. “Seems to be a generator,” she added, midstep when she found herself once again on a higher floor. Her stomach clenched but she had half anticipated it this time. This time, the office-like nature of the building gave way to something more like a laboratory. It was cold and sterile, though rust had eaten away at the metal-

Taylor caught a glimpse of someone moving out of the corner of her eye. Her heart jumped to her throat, air seizing in her lungs. It was the same flash of red hair. Almost as if her feet had a mind of their own, Taylor found herself walking to where the figure vanished, rounding a long table filled with lab equipment to a rusted out door. Her heart sounded against her ribs when she saw a bloody handprint on the door handle.

Despite herself, in a low whisper, she called out, “Emma…?” She grabbed the bloody handle, finding it still wet before pulling it to the side. It felt like her heart burst when she saw it was Cinder standing on the other side of the door, a cold smile on her face as she reached out with a slave collar, clamping it around her neck tight enough to choke.

Taylor tripped back, dragging Cinder with her, her hands clawing at the slave collar. Cinder fell onto of her, her cruel amber eyes gazing down into Taylor's. “Emma saw what you were. A good obedient slave that won't strike back no matter what we do to you. You-” Cinder spat venom until a diamond sword punched through her skull and-

It wasn't Cinder. It wasn't Emma. Taylor had no clue who it was, but they were dead. In a frantic display, she shoved the corpse off of her, crawling back as her hands frantically reached for a slave collar that wasn't there. it still ached, though, and she knew she would have bruises and bloody scrapes. Law crouched down in front of her, blood shining red on his diamond sword. “Taylor, what's going on?”

That was a great question but it felt like her skin was crawling and her heart was going to burst. “I- I'm hallucinating!” Taylor blurted, blinking away tears that burned in her eyes. “I s-saw-” she bit her tongue, hating how her voice hitched.

“I think you need to get your insects out of here. The rest of us are fine, and your gas mask is working,” Law noted, checking her mask and she hated the small comfort that his touch brought. He was real. He-

“You didn't know they were…?” She asked, glancing over at the body. They looked malnourished, wearing a military inspired uniform. Her hands were bloody, destroyed almost, as if she had beaten them on something even as bones began to break. Thoughts fired off, a thousand of them a second, but she focused. Even as she flinched when Curie arrived to take care of her. Her thoughts weren't rational -- Curie wouldn't slice her open, or burn her alive, or experiment on her.

Law… Law was helping her. He was evil and awful, but he was helping her. And… and she found a weakness in his power.

He couldn't accurately see what was in his Room. He got the structure of his surroundings, the layout, and maybe the arrangement of things inside of them, but he could be tricked. She swallowed her heart, seeing the glance between Yoruichi and Law, which had the latter shrugging. She was making progress. She was taking steps forward.

Taylor had no idea how many she had to take, but she was determined to see this bitter road to its end.

“We'll, we know we're not alone,” Law spoke up, sounding unbothered before Taylor felt a pinch in her arm. She almost flinched before forcing herself to understand that it was a stimpack, and already she felt the trickling sensation start at her neck while the pain faded. Her heart stopped pounding at her ribs like it was trying to escape her chest and it was only then that Taylor realized how ragged her breathing was.

“Monsieur Law -- we should find the counter agent with all haste! Madame Taylor is quite unwell,” Curie said and Taylor shook her head.

“I'm fine,” She retorted curtly, sending her insects out of the building to patrol the area. It soothed an itch in the back of her mind. She was securing the area, and that meant they couldn't be attacked from below, and that soothed part of the fears that pricked at her like needles.

Law looked at her for a moment before shaking his head, “No, you're out if it.” He said, and Taylor bristled, going to stand but it felt like her legs belonged to someone else. “Curie, you're on nurse duty. Rumi, would you look over them outside the building?”

Blinking away the haze of her eyes, Taylor looked at Rumi to see that the woman was staring down at her, her face hidden by the mask. “...Fine,” she agreed, but Taylor didn't like the sound of how she agreed. And, apparently, neither did Law.

“And Yoruichi, could you keep the pace? I got it from here,” Law said, inclining his head to Yoruichi, and getting two enthusiastic thumbs up.

“Leave it to me,” Yoruichi replied, sounding thoroughly amused for whatever reason. Taylor wasn't sure she even wanted to know. Not that she would have had the chance to ask because her stomach lurched as Taylor suddenly found herself outside with the others. She ripped her mask off her face, breathing in the comparatively clean air.

Her skin felt cold and hot at the same time, but she grit her teeth and focused. She couldn't let Law out of her sight, so she closed her eyes and focused.

Her grip on her other insects started to slip away, but they were far enough away that it wasn't an issue. And, beneath her eyelids, Taylor started to see. The positioning was poor, everuthing was too big, and her senses were screaming at her something was wrong, but she saw all the same.

It took some getting used to, seeing through the eyes of a fly, hidden in a crease of Law's clothing. The rest of the facility was a blur. Distantly, she was aware of everything that was going on, but it had trouble registering with her. Not because everything was muddled, but because everything was too sharp. They entered a testing area made of a number of rooms, detailing a variety of situations, and when an automated voice that grated on Taylor's ears like nails on a chalkboard started to give a tour… she realized what she had been dosed with.

A gas that drove people into temporary insanity with paranoid delusions until they turned on one another.

If there had to be a bright side of the situation, it was that Taylor was fairly certain she had impressed Law with her self control. It also helped that Law found others in the building, driven insane by the gas. Some looked like they had been trapped inside for weeks, months even, driven into animal-like behavior of carving out territory for themselves and hiding there, only to attack with savage fury when threatened.

Little by little, Law made his way up the tower until he opened a door, only to be greeted by two people.

Taylor's attention first went to the man -- dark skin, clean shaven, wearing a cowboy hat and a duster. In his hands was a laser rifle, just one that she had never seen before -- it had a hand crank. The laser rifle snapped in Law's direction with their entrance, which brought Taylor's attention to the second person in the room.

A woman. Beautiful with black hair that barely brushed her shoulders, blue eyes, high cheekbones, and a slender jaw. She looked like she walked off the cover of a magazine, but her body was that of a porn movie. Her breasts were utterly massive, easily the biggest that Taylor had ever seen, and the skin tight blue jumpsuit that she wore certainly didn't help with the impression. She couldn't even zip it up all the way. The jumpsuit revealed an hourglass figure, wide hips and a flat stomach. Armor had been patched over the jumpsuit, and a belt over her waist held a pistol.

She stood in front of a desk, half leaning over a computer and Taylor's jaw dropped at the miles of cleavage, gaping to the point that she hardly registered that the woman leveled a gun in their direction. Law, however, seemed unbothered as he entered the room with a confident swagger.

“You don't seem to be madder than a bag of cats,” Law remarked and, perhaps it was because he could speak, the two lowered their guns.

“Neither do you. Are you with the Institute?” The woman asked, not lower her gun.

“The opposite -- I'm trying to find the Institute,” Law answered easily and the woman perked up at that. “What brings you to this little slice of hell?”

It was the man that spoke up, “We're with the Minutemen. Well, what's left of them. I'm Preston Garvey and that's General Nora.” Preston introduced the two of them. Taylor had heard some things about the Minutemen -- they were a policing force in the Commonwealth, but they were destroyed by something or another.

“We're here for this gas,” Nora answered, her voice curt and unfriendly. “To turn it into a weapon against the raiders at Nuka-World,” she added, and Taylor tensed. A weapon like that could be incredibly useful with the right place and the right time. It would turn the slavers at Nuka-World against one another.

He laughed, “Good luck with that!” He said and it was only then that Nora and Preston relaxed. The information had been a test, Taylor realized, to see if Law was with them. “Any luck?”

Nora nodded her head slowly, “Some. We have the recipe and the counter agent.”

“It’s messy, but we don't have the numbers to take them on in a straight fight,” Preston added. “We're recruiting, if you're interested?”

“That easy to sign on?” Law questioned and Taylor wrung her hands, cursing that she was outside of the building. Part of her wanted to scream out warning in the hopes that the two would hear her. Warnings that they shouldn't reveal too much or that the man they sought to defeat was right in front of them.

“You got here. That shows you're made of sterner stuff than the average wastelander,” Nora offered with a small nod.

“Aw, shucks,” Law chuckled, “Sorry, not a joiner. I have my own thing going on. Thanks for the offer, though.” Taylor relaxed ever so slightly, but she didn't drop her guard, even knowing that there was little that she could realistically do. Especially when she was faced with potential allies in the fight

Nora didn't seem particularly surprised by the refusal, “Well, you did laugh in our faces.”

“Better than we usually get,” Preston agreed with a half-hearted smile, clearly disappointed with the answer, but also not surprised by it. “But you said that you were here for the Institute? Why would you think you could find something about them in a place like this?” He said, glancing at Nora, who seemed intensely interested.

Law gestured to the computer and Nora took a step back from it, rising to her full height. She came up to Law's shoulder when he stepped by her, Taylor noticed and her vision was then filled by a screen. “Swung by the Vault-tec HQ and found out that it was run by a bunch of psychopaths. Vault hundred and eleven huh? Cryogenic hibernation, right?” He said, pulling up menus and sorting through e-mail logs.

Nora clenched her jaw, “Yeah. They were all like that?”

“Most of them were a lot fucking worse. If you're the sole survivor, then your Vault did a much better job of keeping people alive than half of them,” Law said, and there was genuine scorn in his voice. It was a strange thing to hear, if Taylor was being honest. It felt weird agreeing with him about… anything. He was supposed to be the bad guy that she was working to overthrow. “But, that data was meant to go somewhere. One of the places was here, as part of a joint initiative… with…”

M.I.T, Taylor saw on the screen. Emails between the leaders of Hallucigen. The CEO of Hallucigen was pleading with whoever was on the other end.

Nora's breath hitched ever so slightly, but Law continued. “Now, whatever Vault-tec's actual goal was? Haven't the foggiest, but I'm pretty sure that it didn't work. But before all the Vaults went straight to hell and stopped reporting in, they compiled a nest egg of data. The data was only accessed once after the war started from the location that we used. It wasn't Hallucigen, I know that now -- the company was broke as a joke and the apocalypse saved it from bankruptcy.”

Nora's gaze was intense, “Making M.I.T a possible candidate.” Her gaze flicked to Law, “Thank you. I… the Institute. They took my son. I've been searching for him-”

“And making the Commonwealth a safer place for him to grow up in once we find him,” Preston added, and Nora seemed vaguely thankful.

“We'll, if you want to thank me, I wouldn't say no to some of that counter agent. One of my group got hit with the stuff, and the others are with her outside,” he informed, making Taylor tense once again. “She's playing it off and holding it together, but she's bugging the fuck out and I'm worried.”

Law was worried about her. Taylor had no idea how to even to start processing that. When was the last time anyone had been worried about her? Her dad? No, he was… lost after mom died. What… what the fuck? How was a super villain the first person to give a shit about her since her mom died?

“I- yeah, here,” Preston said and Law took the counter agent while Taylor warred with her feelings, trying to get them back under control.

“You never said why you're looking for the Institute,” Nora noted as Law stood up, taking the counter agent and sliding it into a safety harness at his side.

“I got kidnapped by some settlement called Covenant down the ways because they thought I was a synth,” Law answered with surprising ease, making the two Minutemen frown deeply. “They were grabbing people whenever they came by, torturing them and experimenting on them to find a reliable way to detect synths. Fat chance that -- they didn't even know their head scientist was a synth.”

Nora nodded slowly, “Revenge?”

“More like they piqued my interest,” Law admitted, surprisingly honest. “Well, I'm not much interested in being a hero, but if you want to join up with me to kick the Institute in the dick, I'm game.” That was perfect, Taylor thought. If they joined them, then Taylor could work with them. Establish a rapport. Let them know they had a friend on the inside.

A light laugh escaped Nora, “What happened to not being a joiner?”

“I'm not joining anything. You're joining me -- very different,” Law said, a teasing smile in his voice. “That, and you've tugged at the heartstrings. My parents were shit, so I won't get in the way of a mom who actually gives a shit about her kid.” As he spoke, he offered a hand to Nora.

She glanced down at it for a moment, then up at Law. “Until we find the Institute,” she agreed, taking his hand and shaking it.

It was only much later, when the drugs were flushed out of her system, that Taylor realized what just happened… and by that time, it was far too late to do anything to stop it.

…

Here’s what Nora looks like: Link